At last the site has been up dated, and just in time for Christmas. As usual, at Christmas, I’ll be adding a festive story on the 22nd of December. It will be published in The Times that day, and go on-line here, just for you. What’s it about? A donkey, a frost, a little girl, and something unexpected.

We’ll send out an email message to everyone on the 21st.

All the journalism is there, including a piece I wrote for the Guardian Bookclub about ORANGES, and a piece about Homeopathy, which caused endless trouble – emails from a enraged californian doctor threatening me with lawsuits, a 4000 word (4000!) ‘reply’ from a UK doctor, which completely ignored everything I had said and just went into rant-mode, cross letters from people who believe that homeopaths are Satanists… BUT also, over 100 emails in support of the piece – which as you will see if you aren’t a frothing mad nutter, is a very mild enquiry into what homeopathy might be, and why it seems to work for many people.I honestly don’t know whether it is a biochemical intervention or a phenomenon of consciousness – but either way, it’s interesting, and, I think, worth discussing.
Anyway, have a read, see what you think.

Things have been pretty busy since The Stone Gods was published in September. The reviews were pretty good, I’m told, though my favourite quote was from the Chairman of the Booker Prize, a statistician, who damned the thing as ‘a complete failure’. I think we might use that on the paperback.

I loved writing the Stone Gods, and I am happy with it. My advice to writers anywhere, published or not, is to love what you do, and forget about the rest. Writing is always hard work, always difficult, there are days of despair, that are times when the thing really isn’t working, but you have to be able look underneath all of that, and find the place of private commitment that is yours and yours alone. If that is there, and if it is real, you will be able to carry on. If it isn’t there, then you will be vulnerable to whatever other people have to say about your work – good or bad, and that is not right. For anyone who works alone, creativity is not about consensus. This isn’t to say that you behave like an arrogant shit – it doesn’t matter whether your gift is great or small, it matters that you care about what you do, and find enough satisfaction in it, through good times and bad. And remember, experiment is important, and the right to fail is important.

No-one expects a scientist to go into the lab and come up with the goods all the time. Even very great artists make a mess, and all of their work is not of the same achievement. Our society doesn’t understand art as a process; we are obsessed with results. We are quick to judge. I think of art as a continuum – the continuum of the individual artist, and my continuing relationship with the work of that artist. And sometimes, it has to be said, we can read a novel or a collection of new poems, or go and see an exhibition of someone’s work, and be disappointed. That doesn’t matter – there will be still be much to think about. And next time, it will probably be different. My other piece of advice – we’ve done Trust Yourself, is trust those living artists you have come to love. Like anyone you love, there will be disappointments from time to time. That doesn’t mean anything. For me, there is nothing better than staying the course with someone whose work means a lot to me.

I suppose this is true of the past too, though in a different way. I have just been in Paris and I went to see the Courbet exhibition at the Louvre. The fact is that some of his work is of such power and intensity that it is the only thing to look at all day. I ended up studying three pictures very closely.

I also have to say that a lot of the stuff he did is second-rate because he couldn’t be bothered to follow through his vision. He was so successful that he felt he could do whatever he wanted, which is wonderful when he is inspired and insipid when he is not. 

BUT, I don’t want a world without Courbet, and I can (literally) overlook the sugary porn and sentimental animal pictures. Just in case you were wondering, I don’t count L’Origine du Monde as sugary porn – I think it is a masterpiece.

I can assure you that seeing it live is quite different to seeing it in reproduction. At the Louvre, the curators of the exhibition were obviously so disturbed by it that they hung it discreetly, in between two other paintings. Painted 100 years before the Beatles, and the Swinging Sixties – this is a very difficult painting to look at – and a wonderful one too. If you have time to get over to Paris to have a look – do go there.

Christmas… are we ready? I am not giving any Christmas presents this year – except for the kids who will gets books as usual, and except for some half bottles of champagne to an ancient friend of mine, who needs to be sent such things. I am refusing all gifts too – unless someone wants to make a donation to one of my charities. It has been a hard year for me in many ways, and it just doesn’t feel right to end it by going shopping.

But I will decorate the cottage with my marvellous supply of decorations, and I will have wreaths on the doors, front and back, and some lights round the trees outside.

And I have already started my seasonal round of favourite things to do:
Listen to Handel’s Messiah – such great music.
Read Dickens A CHRISTMAS CAROL (again)
Read Carol Ann Duffy’s wonderful poem ANOTHER NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
Go for walks and bring home branches and cones and ivy trails.
Start to calm down – a slug of homemade Sloe Gin helps. There is still time to make this – Go and pick a load of sloes, prick them, half-fill a bottle with them, nice and tight – top up with gin or vodka, leave somewhere cool and dark for at least a month. If you do it now you can drink it in the New Year.

I will start Christmas as I always do, because I am a creature of habit in this, with the Festival of Carols and Nine Lessons on Radio 4 at 3pm Christmas Eve. This means smoked salmon on black rye bread, and pink champagne too, so I shall not be badly off. Christmas Day I will cook the goose, eat my own sprouts and carrots from the garden, and take a long walk.

My friend Ruth Rendell refuses to spend Christmas Day with anyone, and I can feel the attraction of it. But she and I will sit down and eat dinner together on Boxing Day, and be merry. It is a time for old friends as well as family, but even if there are hundreds of you, try and find at least one hour to be alone, and feel and find the mystery of this holy time – it doesn’t have to be a Christian mystery, after all the feast is more ancient than that, but there is some spirit at work at Christmas, I believe, and it is easy to be in that spirit, with just a little time.

But, although there will be quiet, I shall also be dishing out the mince pies. I love mince pies, and if you buy them (except from a Womens’Institute stall, which is allowed on grounds sentimental and traditional) you must be very rich or terrified of cooking, because nothing is easier to make than a mince pie, except, maybe, a cheese sandwich. Here’s what you do.

500grams of plain flour
100 grams of white vegetable lard (yes, I mean it)
100 grams of butter (good quality butter)
50 grams of icing sugar
Cold water
Mincemeat (buy the nice organic stuff in a jar or make yr own)

Rub the fat and the flour together until you get breadcrumbs (this is not alchemy, I don’t mean real breadcrumbs, I mean a breadcrumb-like mixture). Add about 4 tablespoons of cold water until you can mix the breadcrumbs into a firm dough that can be rolled out. Unless your kitchen is freezing, stick this dough into the fridge for half an hour and have a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and check your emails or something. Sticking the stuff in the fridge just makes it easier to roll out.

OK. Dust your worktop or chopping board with a handful of flour and roll out the pastry nice and thin but not so thin that it falls apart like a dieting diva at a Christmas party.

You can use a proper pastry cutter shape for the next bit, but I just use an expresso cup. It all depends on the SIZE of mince pie you want to make. I like small ones, not obesity-inducing buckets of mince and pastry.

So, cut out the nice circle shapes from the pastry and put these nice circle shapes into a tin designed for small individual pies or buns – usually about 15 to a tin, then dollop a TEASPOONFUL of mince into the centre of your lovely little pastry-wells.

Now cut yourself some lids – I do use a special star-shape cutter here, but you don’t have to do that, as long as the lids are a bit smaller than the pies – so if you have used an expresso cup, maybe you now need an egg-cup.

If you want a sealed pie – you have to damp the lids with water and place damp side down on the mince, sort of crimping the edges together. If you use a star cutter, you get an open pie anyway.

Cook in a hot oven for 15mins.

If you want to make loads, the trick is to freeze them UNCOOKED, and cook as needed.
Honestly, it’s good fun and really easy, and kids love doing the cutting out. At the end there is always some dough left over, so why not let the kids make some shapes of their own for the world’s plainest and tastiest little biscuits? Try dunking in coffee, and feel smug at all those e numbers you aren’t eating.
As I get older, Christmas becomes more reflective and contemplative, in fact, mince pies are pretty contemplative, I find. Christmas Day now seems to be the only day in the year when you can be sure of being left in peace, and that is too valuable to waste going to a party or getting drunk. I will get out my best wine, and I will dress up – in honour of the day, and the fire will blaze and the candles will burn, and the cats will have to wear red collars and I might even give the hens their own Xmas tree.

If I had children, it would be very different – but as I can make a choice, the choice will be for quiet.
Not so on the 23rd –when I take the kids to their Xmas show and will find myself doomed to listening to Frosty the Snowman about a million times. Then they get their own body weight in sausages and ice cream, and they can do what they like – wear tinsel, scream and shout, run like maniacs, and make the taxi driver put on a Santa hat.

I think this is a good time to try and help someone out too. Have a look round and see if there is something you can do for someone – not a friend as such, more a neighbour or someone at a remove. Kindness at Christmas heals wounds – the wounds we inflict and are inflicted on us all year round by thoughtlessness or sometimes downright nastiness. We are not very good at being kind. But it is what Mother Teresa said when she was asked what ordinary people could do to make the world a better place. ‘BE KIND’

That seems like a good note to end this column on, and to end the year.

Love to you and yours, and peace, and the happiness that is real.